"Oh, my God." I shouted; my palm placed on my forehead. "I kissed him! I freaking kissed him!"

"Argh." Lily rolled facing away from me. She took her white pillow and put it on top of her head. "Why are you shouting?"

"And I was sober!" I ranted. "I kissed him!"

I was having a mini heart attack rethinking about the events that happened last night. The soft feathery kiss that was supposed to brush our lips, became hungry once I kissed him back. 

Throwing my feelings all over the place, I traced my hands over the stubble that I desperately wanted to touch. I tasted lemon on his lips, too tempting and alluring. Then, it was only sucking and biting.

Soon, I was on his lap. My hands tugging on his curly soft hair, pulling and hauling in a pleasurable pain. He tilted my head, our noses rubbing against each other as he sucked my bottom lip. His right hand made circles on my arm involuntarily making me squirm under his touch.

I pulled back first, trying to get a breather. When I looked shyly back at him, breathing heavily, he had a genuine smile on his face – one that I had not seen before. It was so infectious that I reciprocated back at him. The smile turned into giggles and soon we were laughing like maniacs. I don't know what possessed me at the exact moment because I did something very stupid.

I hugged him.

And before he could understand what was happening, I kissed him back, square on his lips – a small chaste kiss and stood up. I could tell that he was disappointed, but I smiled back at him, putting my hand in front of him.

For once in my life, I seemed confident enough to pull such a stunt. We walked back into the house as if nothing had gone wrong and were acting as if it was something next to normal bread. Though I might have fooled him, I was sure as hell shaking below my knees. It felt as if I had gone high without touching a single drop of alcohol the whole night.

But, if I must be honest, I had been smiling the entire night – even when I saw Nick flirt and laugh with almost everyone he knew. That was when my happy bubble exploded.

What was I thinking? And who was I kidding?

I was running away from one flirting jock to another racing jock.

I had been trying and avoiding Brian all night that I had forgotten the consequences of hanging out with Robert. 

I pulled Lily to one side and told her that we must get going. With a few resistances back at me, she agreed huffing and calling me a party pooper. We got into my car, all three of us while Nick said that he would crash somewhere there.

Lily took the back seat and since I was hyperventilating already, I asked Robert to drive us home. He readily agreed – no comments or comebacks. He looked across towards me every five minutes, smiling to himself, probably thinking about our kiss.

I asked him to drive to his place first and I would take over from there. He obliged and when we reached his place, he got down and came to my side. I got out of the car and waited patiently, forming words in my idiotic brain to somehow apologize and make it all disappear in a blink.

Robert came forward and I held my breath. Though I had kissed him – twice to be precise – I wanted time to think it all through. Everything was happening very fast and I wanted time to catch up. 

To my relief, he hugged me sideways, and I was glad. After a day like this, where I was emotionally drained, I just wanted to be held. Before letting me go, he kissed my hair and promised to see me tomorrow.

I didn't know if I wanted to cry or laugh at my bizarre situation. Here I was feeling guilty and trapped with Rob's kiss, yet I was finding solace in his own embrace. How was that possible?

Sleep was a far-fetched dream. Tossing and turning the same topic and thinking in all perspectives had made me feel hangover when I actually didn't have one. Once, I had made sure that Lily was awake, I wanted to know answers. Putting it all out in the open, in front of Lily, the most intelligent girl I had ever know, I waited for some realization.

"You said that a hundred times already!" Lily wined.

I knew her hangover were worse especially when she drank her favorite drink, vodka. And with me yapping about my fateful kiss, she was about to burst open in flames.

"Lily, listen to me." I pleaded. "Was it the right thing to do?"

Lily sat upright, her eyes blood red, shooting daggers at me. Her hair was a mess and it stood out in all directions making her look like a woman who had woken up from the dead. She looked like a person ready to hunt for blood, especially mine.

"Two Advil. Now." She said, almost zombie like and I wondered if it was the same Lily I knew.

Without another glance, I ran to her kitchen and located what she had asked for. I placed them on her extended hand. She took them without putting much fight with me. She swallowed them whole not sparing a second to see if it were the same tablets that she took for headaches.

"Where the hell is my caffeine?" She roared and for a second she seemed like a diesel engine coughing up in its last drop of gas.

I brewed her a fresh cup of black coffee, not sure if she would like cream in them especially when she had a hangover. When I handed it to her, she nodded her head in appreciation and I was glad that I had skipped the cream.

"You have no idea how much you owe me." She muttered as she took a sip. I watched her anxiously, my patience teetering as the seconds passed by. "Get me the pen and the paper."

"I know I'm a horrible person." I sighed. "How am I supposed to face him at the tracks?"

"Just get me the things." Lily said, finishing her cup. "Let's talk then."

I did as I was told and got her the things that she had been asking wondering why on earth she needed them when I wanted to pour my heart out to her.

"Lil, what are you doing?" I asked, my serenity with her had already evaporated leaving behind nothing but the guilt of what I had done in a moment of pure idiocy. "You know what, just forget it."

I got up and made my way to the door. But Lily's shrill voice halted me in place. "Come sit your ass down!" My eyes bulged in shock, she never cursed. "I didn't get up from my hangover for nothing."

I went back and sat in front of her.

"Now, tell me." She started, pulling her devilish hair into a ponytail. She stuck a band around it to make it stay in its place. "Where exactly were you when this happened?"

"The front gate of the garden. No one was there and I wanted to be alone." I said, recollecting the night. "Brian was being an ass to me, and I wanted to get away from there as soon as possible. It was the only place where it was quite."

"Back to topic." Lily scratched something on the notepad that I had gotten to her. When I leaned forward to see what she was writing, she shook her head no. "Not yet. So, when did Robert come there?"

"Um," I didn't know where she was going with all the minute details but considering her to be the most intelligent girl that I knew, I tied my tongue only to answer her questions. "Around twenty minutes I was there."

"You said he called you devil and then said you looked beautiful, not the other way around?" She jotted my answers down.

"No." I said. "Lil, if you are going to make a doodle out of it and make me look like a fool, then I'm calling quits."

I couldn't believe that I was sitting in front of my best friend, talking about how life was playing with me while she noted down each and every detail, like a lawyer looking for loopholes at every corner.

"I'm taking up the symptoms and putting them together to find the solution." She clarified and I didn't hesitate to roll my eyes at her. "My results are 99% effective."

"What about the remaining 1%?" I asked, not able to believe her bullshit story that she was making up.

"It's up to you." She shrugged. She looked more of herself now, her hangover leaving her completely and she seemed like she was a professional counsellor talking to an addicted kid. "It depends on what you are going to do about it."

I put my head in my hands, wondering why she was being so annoying.

"Let's come back to the topic, eh? She gave me a smile. "He pulled you onto his lap?"

"I mean..." I flushed. "I was feeling cold and he was being a gentleman and – "

Lily scoffed at this. "He was not offering his coat." She said. "He's not a gentleman, Scar. He hugged you to make you feel warm."

My cheeks burned. "He is! Well, at least, he was not a perv in grabbing my ass like Brian."

"Hmn," She hummed. "You are taking his side. Good, good."

"Lily!" I wined. "Then we kissed, and I don't know what took me over, but I kissed him back." My inner anxieties were back with me now – throwing looks of shamefulness at me. "Oh, God. How stupid am I?"

Lily stopped her notes and looked at me, with a knowing smile on her lips. "Did you like it?"

"What are you talking about?" I almost shouted at her. I was being scrutinized and inspected under her gaze. It was even worse than Robert making shrewd observations about what would happen in the race. He kissed me and I kissed him back. That was it! I had not smiled like that since a long time. "What's not to like about that?"

"Interesting." Lily said, taking notes. I didn't realize that I had said it out loud. "Did you run away after that?"

That was something that surprised me too. I had expected me to run to the hills or bury my head deep inside the ground, but to my disbelief I had giggled like a sappy romantic puppy, even though I never acknowledged it.

My voice was so low when I told her exactly what happened. Lily only smiled her secret smile and looked at me. Her doodle was probably complete.

"How am I supposed to face him today?" I asked falling on the mattress. "He's my earpiece for God's sake. What if he hates me and kills me on the road?"

"Scar," Lily snorted. "You are over thinking things. When did you start them? Didn't you always say that you had to be in the present to make things work?"

I heaved a sigh and sat upright. She was right, I would just have to man up and tell that it was a big mistake and it would never happen again. We maintained a professional relation and that should remain as long as we were working with each other.

"So, I've concluded." Lily said, looking at the notepad in which she was scribbling all this time. "I think he likes you. I mean it's around sixty percent, so I don't know."

"What?" I asked, unable to believe her. "That's not possible. He makes fun of me all the time and pulls my leg, just because he can. Show me one person who does that?"

"Hey," Lily put her hands up in mock surrender. "It's just my statistics. And to be frank, you like him too, but you are not so sure about it. But the friendship is sailing hard."

"You sound like an astrologer." I pouted at her, asking myself if I should be believing her. She could be making great theories just to prove herself right. "I'm not so sure what you are talking about."

"What I mean to say is that you guys are going to be okay." She smiled. "But, just so you know, I like him better than Brian."

"Lily!" I scolded. To distract myself from further torment, I scooted closer to her. "Let me see."

I pulled the notepad which she was using. To my utter surprise, there were actually numbers and figures! My name and Robert's name were written in capital blocks. The whole scene was written down, with a word kiss being circled in between. Words like friends, happy, sad and anger was written all over which were joined together in arrow marks.

"What the heck is this?" I asked, still recovering from the shock. "Is it always this complicated?"

She shrugged. "Depends."

"On what?" I persisted.

"I didn't have to make one with James." She said. "I knew it when I was with him. It was like the best time of my life. I just knew."

"God, why couldn't it be that simple with me?" I asked still looking at the arrows that were pointing my name with Robert's. "Why couldn't I have known that it was not going to work out with Nick? Now I'm stuck here, not able to get over it."

"Hey," Lily sat next to me, placing her hands on my shoulder. "You never settled with easy." She reminded me.

Complications were the only thing that I had learnt from my early days. And they were the ones which made me stronger.

"So, it's going to be complicated huh?" I asked her with a lopsided grin.

"That's life."

---

Though I had never relied on liquid courage, I desperately wished for it now. I was at the shop, clearing tables for the night. It was almost eight 'o clock and I knew I had to face it one day or another.

Most of the days, I would have completed my work by seven and would have reached the tracks by eight. But not today. I was taking my sweet time to perfect the counter before I got out. Truth be told, I wanted to buy some time to face him.

"Hey, you okay?" Monica came behind me, watching me. "You have been rubbing that counter for fifteen minutes straight."

I wanted to shout at God for sending the over-observing people into my life where I was constantly being monitored every second of my existence. Lily had recently joined into the group and I wondered if there were any normal people around me.

"Yeah, just distracted." I smiled at her, terminating my inner monologue. "I should get going."

The lights were already turned off and the customers were told that the shop was being closed. The only light that illuminated Monica's features were the lamp that was coming from the kitchen. Mira had turned in for the night, complaining something about weak knees.

"Your problems with Nick, okay now?" Monica asked, still not convinced that I was alright. "You were pretty upset about it few weeks back."

"Yeah, We made up." I smiled. "We are good friends now. I understand, it was just not meant to be."

"Oh, honey." Monica rubbed my back in a soothing gesture.

"I'm going to be fine, Mon." I assured. "Don't worry about me."

I pulled my apron away and placed it back on the hanger. I dusted my jeans before I put my bag back on.

"Are you sure will you be okay? Do you need a ride home?" Monica asked, but when I was about to say her that it might be a good idea and I could use her help, her attention was on the road outside. "I think you are already having one." She smirked. "Be a good girl now."

She patted my head like she was petting a dog. I turned my head to see what she was looking at. To my disbelief, there was Robert leaning against his car, looking at his phone. With one last breath, I found myself getting prepared.

"Robert?" I asked as I reached him. "What are you doing here?"

"When my student doesn't get her ass to practice in time, I go out on hunt." He replied sarcastically without taking his eyes off the phone. Once he was done, he looked at me and smiled. "And I found you."

I trembled in my spot, thinking how I should be dealing with him.

"Cold?" He asked, watching me shiver in front of him.

"No!" It was almost a shout, scared that what might happen next if he just came closer. I saw him smirk, but thankfully he didn't open his smart mouth to talk. "I was heading to the track myself."

"Well, I'm here now." He said, his smile still intact. "Want a ride?"

"How did you know that I didn't bring my car here?" I asked, crossing my hands over my chest. Changing the subject to cool my nerves was the only tactic I depended on. "And you are not just wasting your fuel? For a racer, fuel is very important, how can you forget that, Hastings?"

"I know you only take your car to school to showcase." He rolled his eyes taking a moment to think his comeback. "And your car is not here now, is there?"

I walked around his car and took the passenger seat. "Well, let's go or are you waiting for the heaven to speak up to you?"

He shook his head laughing as he climbed into the car. Maria coughed up before settling and then we were off. It was like old times, and I was happy that Lily was right.

"It was a good thing that you were late to practice today." Robert said avoiding the normal route to the tracks.

"Why is that?" I asked, putting my bag on the back seat. "Can I keep my legs on the dashboard?"

"What? No." Robert said, distracted with his topic. "God knows where it has been."

"Hey!" I defended. "Shut up."

"I thought I should honor my promise and take you to some pizza before practice, but you are making it very difficult for me, Scarlet." He said. "Maybe I should just take you to practice and be done with it. The faster you get out, the safer my Maria will be."

"You are such a drama queen." I rolled my eyes. "How are you human if you are detouring pizza at this time of the night?"

He laughed at that.

"Let's go to the place where that Chinese girl serves!" I clapped my hands enthusiastically. All the guilt and awkwardness vanishing in thin air, I felt more like myself. "That's a sight I would like to see."

"Don't you dare say that again." He shuddered. "No way we are going there. You have no idea how her laugh was haunting me."

I chuckled at that. If there was something he was scared, it was her. "I think she completes you."

"You haven't even seen her face!" He exclaimed. "And what am I? A broken doll?"

"Of course not." I countered back. "You are surely not made of porcelain."

He only rolled his eyes at me. He halted his car at the Pizza Corner, of course she didn't work here, and he found a good spot to park his car without getting a ticket. I chuckled at his change of place getting only a glare back from him.

As we sat waiting for our order, our conversations died and the awkwardness started growing, no one to address the fat elephant that shared our tensed air. I fidgeted with my hair while his scratched his neck.

"So, about yesterday." I started, chanting what Lily told me in the morning that we would be okay no matter what. "I don't know what came over me..."

"Hey, it's okay." He put his hand in mine. "I felt the same thing too."

I relaxed at that. At least we were on the same page.

"I mean," He scratched his head, looking everywhere else but me. His brown eyes scanned the pizza corner and then turned back at me. His face had turned red, like he was embarrassed in talking about it. "Let's just... I don't know."

"Be friends!" I said.

"Or we can be just the way we are." He suggested and I beamed. That was better than my option.

"Exactly my point!" I cried, glad that all was back to normal.

The pizza arrived at that. "I think we should toast for that."

"I don't have coke." I pouted. "Certain someone denied me of my happiness."

Robert laughed at that. He went ahead and ordered an extra large one for me and came back. "Don't make this your habit, sweet pea."

The pizza was delicious with extra cheese and olives, my favorite. Even if we had only been to pizza once, Rob seemed to have memorized what I liked and had ordered just that.

He looked happy now, our previous ineptness forgotten and forgiven. His curls were hanging on his forehead, hiding his right eye from me, making me want to slide it aside just to see what those eyes held in store for me.

His eyes darted towards me and I wondered if he had caught me staring at him. He ran his left hand over his hair, making my wish come true. He chewed his pizza slowly, purposely licking his lips, his face turning into a smirk.

"Want to continue what we started yesterday?" He asked, putting his fingers into his mouth to lick off the cheese that had oozed out when he had taken a bite.

I had been taking a lot of lines from the race boys ever since I could remember, but this didn't even come close to it. Now? I was playful and wanted to make sure that the ball was in his court.

I leaned closer and he imitated my movements, clearly taken aback.

"If you are up for it." I said, biting my lower lip.

He looked at me, his eyes bulging. I heard him gulp as he lifted his left hand to caress my cheek. I leaned forward too, but instead of sharing his ideas, I took a large bite of his pizza which was still there on his right hand.

"Hey!" He cried, not expecting this turn of events. Realizing what dirty tricks he had in mind, he turned beet red and shook his head with a extremely big grin on his face. "I just can't believe you did that!"

And just like that our weird selves were back and there was noting awkward in the air between us. Lily's calculations were right, after all.